Chapter 28

Gazza and his family loved visiting with Asha.

After a gruelling term of study, they were all delighted to just kick back and take things easy for a bit. The flickers disappeared into the forest. As much as they loved having their own special place with Gazza, the forest still had its lure.

Asha presented Gazza with the third pair of droids. She told him that these two displayed the same quirks that the four he now had living with him did, so she had upgraded them. Since Gazza had added to her stores of metals during his visits, she had made some new repair droids to replace the ones that she had given to him.

Sandy and Koala were soon brought into the fold. No one was quite sure what their duties would be but they were sure they would figure something out. The other four droids were more than happy to teach them how to behave like humans so they were all kept amused and out of trouble training them.

Gazza had transported Scar and Dent into the ship. At first, the ants had been worried by being so far from their Queen but the link they had forged with Gazza seemed to reduce any anxiety caused by the dullness of that link.

Once they knew the link to Gazza was strong, neither of them was particularly worried by the loss. They had never had as much fun in their lives, as they did living with the wizards and they were perfectly happy to remain as their personal guards.

When Gazza informed Scar and Dent that the nearest door to get out of Asha was buried at least ten metres down and forty meters inside the hill, the ants suggested that they dig a tunnel into the side of the hill and tunnel to the doors. This way the non-magical members and Asha’s droids could come and go with more ease.

Gazza, Bette and Nat had grinned and decided they could do with some magical practice. Instead of coming down and in from the surface they elected to go out and then up. They would slice out the rocks and the droids would move the cubes to the recycler. Since the family were visiting and using her resources, Asha was quite happy to have her supply of basic elements topped up again.

They decided to use a set of doors from the second level since they were closest to the surface. When they got to the doors, Gazza was surprised that they had spells on them. “Asha, why would these doors have a compulsion spell to ‘Go away’, on them?”

“I do not know, Gazza. I can only think that Wizard Garett put it there to dissuade the others from coming into this section.”

“Well, I’ve cancelled it. It wasn’t very strong for a wizard’s spell. Are the doors indicating they can be opened now or are they still locked out?” Gazza asked.

“Interesting, my system is now receiving new information about the doors. We have air present on both sides of them. The outer set of doors have also been locked open. I shall try to open the inner set,” she replied and activated the doors.

As the doors slid back, the light in the connecting air-lock chamber between them and the outer doors lit up. Gazza chuckled when he realised a cord, somewhat like a heavy-duty electrical extension lead used back on Earth, led from a receptacle on the wall and out into an open space. He checked the plug in the outlet and turned the switch on. Lights lit up in the room and they wandered in to see why it was there.

“Well, fuck me stupid,” Gazza expelled as they looked around.

The cavern was at least twenty metres square and three meters high. A large and wide bed was in one corner. A row of cupboards and a short wall segregated the bed area from the section on the other side that had workbenches wrapped around three walls. This area was also open to the rest of the room on the inner side.

A corner kitchen arrangement was opposite the work area with a square table and four chairs. Opposite the bedroom were two long couches facing each other, with one pushed against the far wall. A door between the bed and the cupboards led through into a modest bathroom.

The door in the middle of the kitchen’s end wall led into a round, domed chamber about twenty-four meters in diameter. It had been used to grow crystals but was now very dim and cool. The cavern looked as if the crystals had been ruthlessly harvested. Those that were left were small and very patchy. A small and centrally located lava well in the floor was crusted over and solid.

“Asha, I have a feeling your Wizard Garret came with you,” Betty said as she flicked through one of the books on the shelf above the workbench.

“Very odd, I wonder why he didn’t wish for me to know he was here. I would have helped him, however, he wanted me too,” Asha replied perplexed.

“I get the impression your wizard was the secretive sort. I think he set this space up as a safe house for someone else but he didn’t want them to access the ship. I believe a female child lived here occasionally. Possibly a daughter to a local female?” Nat said as he held up a simple dress that would suit a Genteli girl of about ten.

Bette looked in one of the other cupboards. “I think she came here often over many years as the clothes hanging in this cupboard are bigger. Strange, there isn’t a second bed but then that one is very wide and if she was his daughter, they might have been used to sharing the big bed if they came here often and for many years.”

“So is that the door out?” Scar asked as she indicated the door they hadn’t opened that was beside one of the couches and on the ship end of the wall.

Dent went and opened it and then disappeared through it. Scar found her friend happily walking up a wide, high roofed and low sloped walkway. About every six meters, it flattened for a couple of meters and then started climbing again. Small lights studded the ceiling to provide dimmed lighting.

The ants found the top four meters formed a small antechamber. Two large metal doors slid back to reveal an entrance that was two and a half metres square. Scar wasn’t surprised to find that a glamour hid the doors from the outside.

The doors also opened between two very large trees that were just to the side of the ships outer wall and close to where they had parked the Autos. She found stepping between the trees had her walking back into the glamour and the doorway was just in front of her. The other spell on the doors kept telling her to go away but Gazza soon fixed that.

Scar and Dent were delighted that they now had easy access to the ship when they visited. The droids and flickers liked this access too and knew it would get used a lot by them. The droids happily went on a resource scavenger hunt for Asha since they didn’t need the wizards to do this for them. Asha could now get her other droids to mine the hill when they were not there. The flickers went looking for food and fun.

Gazza, Nat and Betty had become side-tracked by the books and diaries and settled down for a read.

For the wizards, the three week holiday went far faster than they would have liked.

While they were all happy to head for home, they knew that going to visit Asha and Basil’s extended family were activities they would like to continue doing into the future, come what may. The two new droids went home with them. They happily bunked in with the other droids.

Amusingly, Mandy had become attached to Betty and she basically became her maid and assistant. Possum was Gazza’s shadow or more politely, his manservant and assistant when not posing as his brother. Koala, or Koal as he was more commonly called, took over as the Butler and the fix-it guy, and Wombat somehow became head of security and the gardener. Dent and Scar were more than happy to report to him if a wizard wasn’t around.

Candy dominated the kitchens and not many argued. She let Gazza, Nat, Petal and anyone else who wanted to, help when they felt the urge to cook. Sandy looked after the rest of the house with the help of the other droids when required and otherwise became Gary’s Nanny. Asha had spent some time programming her specifically to look after magically gifted children.

The flicker kids also loved it when Sandy told them stories and came up with games for them. She even started to teach them to read and write, so she was more the au pair of all the kids than anything else. None of the Droids went back to the school that term. They had learnt what it was that Gazza and Asha had wanted them to learn. They were more than happy to stay home and look after the house and their wizards but they were now more socially adept.

An interesting side note is that once back in range, Dent and Scar were able to feel their Queen again with little trouble. They did have to report to an Envoy who turned up to find out why the Queen had had trouble connecting to them. They simply told her that they had been camping with the family and while the link was poor as long as they could feel her they were not stressed. The envoy had to be happy with this.

With the changes taking place in the wizards due to the strengthening of their magical abilities, they took on larger academic workloads for the third term that year. Dean Mitchel happily helped them. The new scientific and mathematical concepts that Gazza had dropped on the science department before the holidays had all of the scientific academics in a flutter.

He had accidentally let his love of flying get the better of him one day and started to explain the concepts of aerodynamics. This, of course, meant he had to explain the maths, then the physics and then how to design a simple flying machine. Gazza thought it was better to introduce the concepts to make and fly small drones before he got to human-sized helicopters.

Nat had gotten into the discussion, as he was interested in the making of the light but strong metals required for flying machines. So he, the chemistry, geological and geographic departments all got together to work out how to source and then make the metals that Gazza described. Many of the professors and other students had plenty to share after their excursions to locate these minerals over the holidays, so Nat was just as busy as Gazza was.

The Periodic table Gazza wrote out for the chemists had them in a tizzy and a lot of work went into finding ways to prove these compounds existed for their own curiosity. He did warn them to stay away from the radioactive metals, as they would make them sick. It kept them happy and Gazza didn’t lose as much sleep over their findings, or lack of, as they did.

Betty was going in a different direction. Since politics and social aspects was going to become her forte, she had spent a lot of time examining what had worked in the past according to Asha’s records and the local records. Oddly, she liked Gazza’s story of having a regent who had the ultimate say in major issues but otherwise, a parliament elected by the people made the day to day decisions that affected everyone.

Asha had found instances of this type of rule in the Keltrian histories that she had been able to access. While the Lord Wizard ruled a country or small nation under their Queen, they often delegated the nitty-gritty to the local lords or the wizards in their decade. In some of the nations on Planet Reh where the Granteli and Shifters mostly lived, they liked using a parliamentary system even if the members were often made up of local Lords or Mages who had magical abilities.

Asha had told her that while some felt the magicians neglected their duties, others believed that it was a fairer system since the higher order magicians were not as easy to corrupt. Gazza told Bette that they might get a bit more time to do their own thing if she went the parliamentary way. He was more into the idea of being a figurehead with a big stick (magic) that he could use if he had too.

The more Bette learned, the more she was leaning to this method of rule.

They had been back in school for a week when life took an interesting twist for the White Tribe.

Gazza had woken early and headed down to put the coffee on. As he went to pass through the lounge room, he noticed something odd and stopped. He walked around the short wall and checked out the two ants that were sprawled over his comfortable couches. He then noticed that a flicker with orange fur and wearing a rather bright vest was curled up with one of them.

At first glance, he had thought the ants were Scar and Dent and he wondered why they were in the lounge. He then started picking out the differences. For one, the white patch on the head of the ant on the couch nearest him was more of a stripe than a scar. This ant was also a little smaller than Scar was and its chitin had a reddish hue that was even in colour over its body and legs.

It was recognition of the other ant that made him gasp. “Stix!” he cried and hurried over to the couch. He crouched down to look into her face as she groggily lifted her head. “Ouch, not so loud master. We haven’t been asleep that long,” she grumbled.

Gazza couldn’t help himself and he planted a big wet kiss on her head. Just as he was about to pull back, something sharp poked him in the back of the neck and he froze in place.

“Stone, bugger off, this is the boss! Gazza, let me get up,” Stix groused at him.

“He is mighty friendly for a Taran,” Stone grumbled as he stepped back and eyed Gazza warily.

Gazza gained his feet, looked at the other ant and grinned. “Hi Stone, it seems my little Stick-ant found her mate.”

Stone chuckled, “Stick-ant? Is that how she got her name?”

“Well, the one I gave her anyway. I have no idea what her true name is, as she has never told me,” Gazza informed Stone.

“And I never will,” Stix shot back as she gained her feet.

Gazza frowned and turned, because she sounded different. He got to gasp again as his Stick-ant was tying a black silk sari over the top of her remarkable breasts. She looked down at him with her big brown eyes and grinned. “Surprise!” she said as she smoothed the sari down over her ample hips.

Gazza found his eyes travelling up and down Stix’s new form. He had no complaints about the long firm legs and pleasing arse that offset the very nice tits, milk-chocolate complexion and short pixy-cut brown hair. “I’ll say! It seems that you have had an interesting three months, Stix.”

Stix chuckled and replied, “You could say that. Hey Jagger, come and meet the boss.” She put out her hand and the flicker happily latched onto it and swung himself with practised ease up onto her shoulder. Stix turned back and introduced the flicker. “Boss, this is my friend Jagger. Jagger this is Gazza. I’m pretty sure he is a Wizard, but I’m not sure what type.”

Stone had also changed to human form and had tied his sari around his slim hips. His hair was also short but had a light red-brown tone with the thin white strip down the centre. His complexion had a warm reddish tone and his bright eyes were more a dark amber. Stone moved, so he was standing next to Stix and had taken her hand.

Gazza realised that they were both a little taller than Nat in their human form. He surmised they were over one-eighty-five centimetres in height making them more than fifteen centimetres taller than him. It was just as well he wasn’t intimidated by taller people.

“So do you guys want some breakfast?” he asked and waved at them to follow him to the kitchen.

Gazza soon had bread toasting, eggs, bacon and mushrooms frying and coffee perking. Candy came bustling in to shoo him off and stopped dead at the sight of three strangers sitting at the big kitchen table they used for informal meals. “Hey Candy, what do you think of the new and improved Envoy Stix?” Gazza asked as he kept cooking.